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Vampire language
Vampires possess their own language, which many vampires speak. It is unclear if it is learned culturally, or passed down through some sort of genetic memory. This language also has its own writing system, referred to as "vampire glyphs", which are often used in graffiti to mark vampire hideouts. The vampire language contains guttural sounds which are physically impossible for a human to perfectly reproduce: they can push their vocal chords, etc. in ways that would irreparably damage a human. It is possible for a human to intelligibly speak the vampire language, but the inability to match the deeper pronunciation of certain words means that a human cannot pass off as a vampire to a real vampire (i.e. in a telephone conversation - in person, vampires can discern humans purely by smell). The Vampire language sounds vaguely Slavic - to give a hint of an Eastern European origin, i.e. Transylvania - even though, ironically, in real life Transylvania is located in central Romania, where the only major languages are Romanian and a few pockets of Hungarian - neither of which are Slavic languages. In truth, the fictional Vampire language in the first Blade movie was interspersed with actual words and phrases of Russian or Czech. For the first Blade film, UCLA Linguistics professor Victoria Fromkin was hired to design a vampire language (Fromkin was also the creator of the Paku language from Land of the Lost). Unfortunately, Pearson died between the first and second Blade movies, and any notes she may have had on the vampire language were lost. A new linguist was brought in for the second film, J. Matthew Pearson, who strove to match as much as possible what Fromkin had already developed for the first movie - even though all he had to go on was about 6 to 8 lines of dialogue (depending on how you count them). Only two scenes actually contained constructed-language: when a vampire elder berates Frost, and when Pearl yells about the Blood God (all other scenes were just intermixed Russian or Czech). In a post to a mailing list, Pearson gave what analysis he could of the vampire language in the first film, along with his transcriptions. As he explained, it is just a "transcription" because filming notes didn't even survive - so he had to guess on some of the word breaks, depending on how the actors delivered the lines: Scene 1: Vampire Elder berates Frost Krat pruchiri busistampol proto lukchano, Frost. *"You are a disgrace to the vampire nation, Frost" Yachtu spuli litwa... *"If we break the treaty..." Ochach planika dura sahaz do... *"If we gather in numbers..." Mabochachi mati a oranta orastu prakaritsa. *"The human politicians will make our lives very difficult." Umfalat poskani krat kodobranku, chahaz kalinka paskol(d)zo. *"You would understand this, if your blood were pure." Sika lupala tat kapro Blade? *"Don't we have enough trouble with Blade?" Scene 2: Pearl yells about the Blood God Redani proto uchanu, siznu praga umporta, umpanuwa! *"The spirits of the twelve will awaken La Magra! Blood God" Category:Blade (comics) Category:Marvel Comics vampires Category:Fictional languages